Quad-core Samsung Galaxy S III with LTE arrives in South Korea on July 9

An LTE-capable version of Samsung’s Galaxy S III will become available in the company’s home market of South Korea starting on June 9. Three carriers will offer it: SK Telecom, KT, and LG U+. But that’s not the interesting news.

Rather, it’s that all of these carriers will have LTE-capable Galaxy S III units that come with Samsung’s own Exynos quad-core processor, unlike what’s happened in the US. There, all Galaxy S III versions come with the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, because of the Exynos’ touted incompatibility with LTE networking.

Now that myth has simply been shattered. So is a swap for the US market likely? Will Samsung start selling this new quad-core LTE version over there at some point as well? It’s hard to say. One thing is clear: if that ever happens, many early adopters will be quite angry because they went for the dual-core units.

The Galaxy S III to be sold in Korea has 2 GB of RAM, just like its US-bound siblings. It comes with DMB TV support, a pre-requisite for the Korean market. And other than that, it’s the same superphone we’ve known internationally for a while now. Which means it’s also got the same battery, despite LTE being anything but battery-friendly.